New Web Browser, Flock

There’s a new browser on the scene. A startup from Palo Alto unveiled what’s being called a "social browser," Flock. The browser is "built specifically for a new, emerging generation of Web users, one that isn’t satisfied passively browsing media online," according to Business Week. Flock wants to be a dashboard for collaborating, blogging, sharing photos, and more. It does everything a normal browser does (and by normal, I mean Firefox), but has several important additions. These may or may not be things Firefox could do with extensions, but with Flock they are built-in.

Flock will make blogging easier for one, by eliminating the need to do any coding in order to post, change fonts or add photos. (For the record, though, I don’t do any coding now.) When you right-click on a web page, a blogging wizard comes up that automatically creates links, citations, and quotes that are ready to insert into a blog. A horizontal bar on the browser also can load photos from Flickr, so they can be dragged and dropped into the blog post.

Flock expects to have the public beta available in about two weeks. You can sign up on their home page to receive the announcement. In the meantime, you can see screenshots on one of the developers’ blogs.